The Nature of Marketing Communications
- Marketing Communications became a significant aspect of companies' overall marketing missions and and success.
- All organizations-whether firms involved in B2B exchanges, companies engaged in B2C Marketing or NGOs all use diverse types of marketing communications.
- The primary marketing communication tools are traditional mass media advertising, online advertising, sales promotion,, store signage and point-of-purchase, direct-mail literature, sponsorship of events and causes of many others?
- What is Marketing Communications: the collection of advertising, sales, promotions, PR, event marketing, and other communication devices.
Marketing Communications at the Brand Level
-Marketing communicators in their diverse capacities deliver messages regarding different types of marketing topics: products, services, stores, events, and even people.
- What is brand: a company's offering of a product,
service, or other consumption object.
- The important point to remember is that most marketing communications occurs at the brand level. It is also critical for people to know that the term brand is the proper label for describing any object of concerted marketing efforts.
- Brands perform a critical strategic role by providing a key means for differentiating one company's offering from those of competitive brands.
The Integration of Marketing Communication
- Much of any company's success over the years is attributable to its brand managers having dedicated themselves to presenting consistent messages about the brand, both over time and across communication media.
- However, many companies ignore integrated marketing communication and suffer deeply from the poor integrated marketing communications program.
- Current philosophy, believes that integration is crucial for success.
-What is Integrated Marketing Communications, or (IMC), is the philosophy and practice of carefully coordinating a brand's various marketing elements.
-There has been a reluctance to change from this single-function, specialist model due to managerial parochialism and for fear that, change might lead to budget cutbacks in their areas of control and reductions in their authority and power.
- However, in recent years a number of advertising agencies has expanded their roles by merging with other companies or creating new departments that specialize in the growth areas of sales promotions, event sponsorship, and direct marketing.
- Although there is a movement toward increased implementation of IMC, not all brand manges or their firms are equally likely to have adopted IMC.
What is IMC?
- IMC is a communications process that entails the planning, creation, integration, and implementation of diverse forms of marcom that are delivered over time to a brand's targeted customers and prospects.
The Payoff from ICM: The Value of Synergy
- The payoff is that by closely integrating multiple communication tools and media, brand managers achieve synergy, that is, multiple methods in combination with one another yield more positive communication results that do the tools uses individually.
Key IMC Features
-Customer or Prospect
- An initial key feature of IMC is that the process should start with the customer prospect and then work back to the brand communicator on determining the most appropriate messages and media for informing, persuading, and including customers and prospects to persuading, and inducing customers and prospects to act favourably toward the communicator's brand.
-The point of this feature is that brand managers and their agencies should not restrict themselves to only one or select a number of communication media.
- Use any form of relevant contact or touch point
-This second key of relevant contact or touch point and its emphasis on starting with the customer.
-To understand this second key factor of IMC, it will be helpful to draw an analogy between the tools available in marketing communicators and those used by people in craft industries.
- Touch point and contact are used as interchangeable terms to mean any messages medium capable of reaching target customers and presenting the
brand in favourable light.
Speak Single Voice
- Inherent in the philosophy and practice of IMC is the demand that a brand's assorted communication elements must all strive to present the same message consistently across diverse message channels, or points of contact.
-In general, a single voice principle involves selecting a specific positioning for a brand.
- What is a position statement: is the key idea that encapsulates what a brand is intended to stand for in its target market's mind and then consistently delivers the same idea across all media channels.
Build Relationships
-A fourth characteristic of IMC is the belief that successful marketing communication requires building that relationships between brands and their consumer\customers.
-What is a relationship: is an enduring link between a brand and its customers.
-There are myriad ways to build brand\customer relationship. Ex: use frequent flyers, frequency, loyalty programs.
-Relationships between brand and customer also are nurtured by creating brand experiences that make positive and lasting impressions.
- Affect behaviour
- This means that marketing communications do more that just influence brand awareness or enhance consumer attitude towards the brand.
-This point is to move people to action.
Changes in Marketing Communication Practices
-Reduced Dependence on Mass Media Advertising prospects effectively, media advertising is not always the most effective for accomplishing this objective.
- The point is that other communication methods should receive careful consideration before mass media advertising has automatically assumed the solution.
Increases Reliance in highly targeted communication methods.
- Direct mail, opt-in e-mailing, speciality interest magazine, cable TV, and event sponsorship are just some of the contact methods that enable pinpointed communications that often are less expensive and more effective than mass media advertising.
Heightened Demannds on Suppliers
- It is increasingly important for suppliers to offer multiple services.
Increased Efforts to Assess Communications' Return on Investment.
- The investment in marketing communications must be assessed in terms of profit-to-investment ratio to determine whether changes are needed or whether other forms of investments might be more profitable.
Obstacles in Implementing IMC
-Perhaps the greatest obstacle to integration is that few providers of marketing communication services have the far-ranging skills to plan and execute programs that cut across all major forms of marketing communications.
A Model of the Marketing Communications Decision-Marketing Process
- Fundamental Marcom Decisions
-Targeting allows marketing communicators to deliver messages more precisely and to prevent wasted coverage to people falling outside the intended audience.
-Companies identify potential target markets in terms of demographics characteristics, product usage patterns, and geographic considerations.
- B2B marketing communicators also make targeting decisions.
-Another illustration of B2B targeting is an advertising effort by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association that was designed to increase sales of veal.
Positioning
A brand's position represents the hey feature, benefit, or image that it stands for in the target audience's collective mind?
Setting Objective
- Marketing communicator's decisions are grounded in the underlying goals, or objectives, to be accomplishes for a brand.
Budgeting
-Financial resources are budgeted to specific marcom elements to accomplish desired objectives.
-At one extreme is top-down budgeting, in which senior management decides how much each submit receives.
-At the other extreme is bottom-up budgeting, in which managers of subunits determine how much is needed to achieve their objectives.
A Concluding Mantra
- Mantra is a Hindu word meaning incantation or recitation of the song. This mantra should be committed to memory and used as a hallmark when formulating marcom strategy.
Marcom Implementation Decisions
-Marcom managers must make a variety of implementation decisions in the pursuit of accomplishing brand-level objectives and achieving the brand's positioning and targeting requirement.
-Mixing Elements
-A fundamental issue confronting all companies is deciding exactly how to allocate resources among the various marketing communication tools.
- There is no optimum structure of expenditures between advertising and promotion.
- Brand equity consideration s also play a role in evaluating a satisfactory combination of advertising an promotion.
Creating Messages
- Messages are created in the form of advertisement, publicity releases, promotions, package decisions, and any other forms of marcom messages.
Selecting Media
-Though the term media is is typically applied to advertising, the concept of media is relevant to all marcom tools.
Establishing Momentum
- The word momentum refers to an object's force or speed of movement.
- Marketing communications has programs also have, or lack, momentum.
-Critical to the concept of momentum is the need to sustain an effort rather than starting advertising for a while.
Marcom Outcomes
- After marketing communications objectives are set, elements selected and mixed, messages and media chosen , and programs implemented and possibly sustained, program evaluation must take place.
-Measures of communication outcomes include brand awareness, message comprehension, attitude toward the brand, and purchase intentions.
- Accountability, which requires that research be performed and data acquired to determine whether implemented marcom decision s have accomplished the objectives they were expected to achieve.
Conclusion
